Players always want to get to level 20 inDungeons & Dragons. Part of the fun of the campaign is ensuring you grow from humble adventurers who met in a tavern to heroic beings who take on gods and dragons in epic world-saving battles where the lives of thousands, sometimes millions of people, hang in the balance.
There are so many things you can do when you hit level 20, and few players get to experience it. Unfortunately, it can take a very long time to reach level 20 and do everything you’ve dreamed of. Here are some quick ways to get your party to level 20.
8Start A Campaign At Level 10
Take Half The Trouble Of Leveling Away
Depending on the experience of your players, there’s no reason you can’t start your party halfway toward the goalpost. As long as everyone is comfortable and they’ve played the game long enough to quickly progress, acampaign that starts at level 10has tons of benefits for players looking to hit that level cap.
Your players can establish an experienced adventuring party ready to tackle more difficult content. For players who already know what they’re doing, you can skip the early game tedium, progress the campaign as normal, and still get to level 20 faster than starting at level one.
You can alsoimplement a time skipto explain just how these characters start at level 10.
7Host Individualized Sessions
You Don’t Have To Wait For The Next Session
Sometimes, if you’re waiting for sessions to complete before doling out XP, it can take months to level even once or twice. Depending on how frequent your sessions are, even meeting once a week is going to take longer than bi-weekly D&D sessions we wish we all had.
A quicker way to utilize your time outside of sessions is to give out experience points by having one-on-one sessions of roleplay with players, allowing them to get through some content outside of the table and still gain opportunities to level up. The same can be done withgiving bastion turnsif they don’t want to roleplay.
6Switch From Milestones To Experience
Unless Your Milestones Are Quick
This might seem confusing, as milestones seem like a much easier way to get to level 20. Unless you’re playing a pretty short campaign, there’s no guarantee that your players will hit specific story milestones fast enough to top level up in a way that feels like progress. Players can spend months on the same in-game day, meaning a level-up is so far away.
If you switch to experience points, players will feel like they’re gaining something every session and will level up quicker than waiting for a specific story moment to happen. It’s just due to the nature of D&D, so depending on what you give experience points for, they’ll get to 20 faster in real time using experience points.
5Grant Experience Points For Everything
Not Just For Combat
You’re doing yourself a disservice if you aren’t granting experience points for almost everything your players do as a group. Not only does this encourage the party to engage more in the plot, sidequests, and other available activities with a reward of XP, but it also helps them get to level 20 faster. Campaigns tend to be long, but every little bit adds up.
Look for every opportunity to give experience points during a campaign, from fighting to roleplay to downtime activities to unique ideas to even just working well together as a group. Everything can and should be rewarded to get the ball rolling. This works with individual sessions or content done in between sessions as well.
4Plan Out Experience Per Session
You Can Go Full Spreadsheet
If you want to guarantee a quick level-up, you may easily plan out how much experience per session your players will need. While the Player’s Handbook does have suggestions for leveling, the higher level you are, naturally, the longer it will take to level up by experience points.
However, you can thwart this concern completely by calculating how many points your players need for the next level, and splitting them between how many sessions you’d like it to take. You can then average out the amount you’ll need to reward per session, and ensure that everything they do during the session is considered to be able to fairly achieve the amount they’d need.
3Create Unique Magic Items
Give Away Levels For Free
Homebrewed powerful magic itemsare nothing new, and one of the best ways to quickly level up your players is to make an item that can do it for them. What’s more powerful than granting a few levels to the wearer, making them stronger, giving them more spells and hit points? Nothing, especially if it helps to achieve the goal of reaching level 20 a bit faster.
While the items will give a temporary level-up, if they attune to it and have the opportunity to keep it, you can grant free levels while you wait to help them get to level 20 faster. This also grants you a unique opportunity to make them work for these items, gaining levels in the process.
2Add Specific Leveling Opportunities
If You’re Using Milestones, Add Dedicated Sessions To Level Up
Whether you’re doing milestones or experience, adding specific adventures into your campaign for a quick level gain is always a good idea if you want to level quickly. It’s a great idea to grab premade adventures from adventure modules and throw them into your campaign at the appropriate level.
Several adventure modules have adventures classified by level. Add one of these to your campaign at the appropriate time, and use that adventure as a level boost once they complete this section. A quick premade adventure can be used in between your epic tale to boost levels before the party faces something major, no matter what leveling system you use.
If you’re using milestones, this is especially helpful for reaching a shorter milestone quicker than you might have planned, as the next section in a grand adventure.
1Play A One-Shot
Try Out Level 20 For Yourself
While starting halfway is a great choice for campaigns to move forward to level 20, you’re able to alternatively just let your players try it out by allowing them to play a level 20 session outright. With the way leveling works in D&D, this could essentially be a dream sequence of their future selves in a situation they can prevent before it happens.
It can also be a completely unrelated one-shot, allowing them to try high-level content in different classes before settling. Most players choose their class based on what they can do in later levels, looking at those level 17 and higher skills to determine everything they can pull off in the future and work toward that. This gives them an opportunity to test the waters before committing.
